Isolation and Nature

Oh how I need Spring.  Today as the light showers come in and pass by, I feel my sense of isolation.  But, I went out into my front yard, and there are the daffodils, almost turning yellow.  Amidst the cacophony of Corona Virus, are the songs of birds who have returned.  In the closed-in feelings, we seek hope, however we do so, and nature provides inspiration, calm, peace, hope.

I can bird-watch in my jammies, if I choose.  But, I tend to have rituals in mornings, afternoons, and evenings.  I plan my dinner for the day.  I do art along with morning coffee.  I check Facebook and groups emails.  I art. In the afternoons, I watch some tv, crochet, read a book until time to fix dinner.  I fix dinner, then do another layer of painting, then go in and crash on the couch to watch what The Bee Man wants to watch ( omg, Spaghetti Westerns), so I crochet and read, read dn crochet until he goes to bed.  Then I turn on netflix and watch things I have saved to watch.  I eventually fall asleep on the couch ( 14 day isolation from The Bee Man, too, because I crossed provinces.)  I wake in the morning to do the same.  In real life, I would have a shopping day, a lunch date with a friend, go out for the evening once a week and that satisfies my need to socialize.  So, I am not hit as hard with self-isolating.  But, how long can we do this without going stir-crazier?

We are tethered to our house, apartments, etc. and suddenly you want to be out and about.  We try to make it an adventure but we tire of that journey before long.  We go out on to our balconies and patios and try to absorb some vitamin D or sit in the warm rain that showers us often here in Spring.  We become window-peepers, from the inside out.  Suddenly people interest us.  But, eventually, we miss the people we have as social friends.  We miss touch.  We miss interactions full of laughter and interesting topics girlfriends discuss.  Then the stress hits. 

It might be insidious and begin in the pit of your stomach or your soul starts pinging, and/or your psyche starts to work overtime with the voice of your Ego/Evil Inner Witch/ pineal gland.  Suddenly we want comfort food, we want what pacifies us for a time.  I smoke.  I try to only smoke 1/3 of a cigarette at a time and I smoke, at most 5 cigarettes a day.  Suddenly, I am smoking more... aw, pacify me!  It does, for a time.  What it does do is get me outside.  And I hear the birds and try to identify them.  I see them nesting.  I watch the geese moving further north and can, now, identify the geese from the swans and from the pelicans.  

In part, social isolation can truly impact elderly with a whole new sense of loss of freedom, but, I find I am connecting more with nature outside on my patio.  Those of us who are still able to get out and about, and now cannot, we face a different kind of isolation...boredom... that is deadly.  Outside I find I dream of what I am going to do to set up my outside art studio amidst the songs of birds, the flutter of butterflies who will visit, the buzz of my partner's bees. I realize I am connecting more with the things I never want to lose...people, places, things..and those things in nature that give me something else to think about.  Now, I find, I am thinking up ways to help save my partner's bees from those dang mites that killed them all off before winter.  I want to find ways to protect these beings that speak to me of hope.  I crave to be outside arting, but not yet, it has to get warmer than 12C in the day and 5C at night, to take my art supplies out there.  I am learning patience, too.

I got a really awesome frame at a garage sale. 

I used gesso over the three insert squares. 

I, then drew the three pieces that would speak to Spring for me. 

 

I worked on them back and forth as I painted to make sure that I had some true sync in colors.

I loved doing each of these and my palette became the main focus of the paintings.

Layer after layer they came to be.

 

 

In the end, I adore this three panel piece.

How do you connect with nature now you are cooped up inside?

©Carol Desjarlais 3.31.20